


can't pull me back to the ground

by doublejoint



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Alternate Universe, Basketball, Established Relationship, M/M, Wingfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-01
Updated: 2020-07-01
Packaged: 2021-03-05 04:27:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25008427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doublejoint/pseuds/doublejoint
Summary: Sometimes they play with the gravity field off late at night.
Relationships: Himuro Tatsuya/Kagami Taiga
Comments: 2
Kudos: 5
Collections: Little Black Dress Exchange 2020





	can't pull me back to the ground

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LMD18](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LMD18/gifts).



> Thank you for the wonderful prompts and ideas! I love writing Kagami so much, and I hope you enjoy this!

Sometimes they play with the gravity field off late at night. If they go long enough between these times, it almost feels like the first time they went flying together, when Taiga’s wings were big enough to keep him up (just after Tatsuya’s had gotten there, really, just before Taiga had surpassed him and kept going). They’re almost teenagers again, a little shorter and skinner but fucking flying with basketballs in their hands, wings beating against the air until they float back down to the ground and Tatsuya, at least, feels like crashing and collapsing. It’s nearly the same, that joy and wonder, though they can hold it up a lot longer, and they know how to play this way.

Tatsuya knows just how close he can fly without Taiga’s feathers clipping him, how to soar above him and undercut his speed. Taiga can dart in and take the ball, and then hurl himself higher into the clouds before Tatsuya can climb to meet him and steal the ball back. (Taiga could always jump, even before he had wings and before they’d ever set foot on a gravity field, when it was only ever asphalt beneath their feet; somehow it feels like it shouldn’t translate into the air as well as it does, and yet it’s as if the universe couldn’t not let Taiga soar, or as if it didn’t matter and Taiga did it anyway without bothering to check the probability. He’s always had good instincts, too, like knowing when someone’s faking him versus actually about to drive past him, and even when Tatsuya tries to use that to his own advantage Taiga wins by not engaging in his stupid mind games.)

Tatsuya slows his flight, passes the ball from hand to hand, and watches Taiga watch him, the slow flap of his wings pushing down the air just fast enough to keep him at this altitude as he moves back and forth. Tatsuya fakes, and this time he gets Taiga, folds his wings and plummets, something he rarely even tries with gravity; the ground is approaching so quickly and just as quickly Tatsuya’s off toward the hoop. Taiga hadn’t even followed him, just stayed up, trying to head him off from above, but Tatsuya can make a shot from this far below. He’s done it in game; it’s much easier when you’re not fighting extra gravity. 

Taiga figures it out, a split second before it’s too late, enough time for him to fold his own wings down and drop in, block the shot from Tatsuya’s hands and steal the ball back. He takes his own shot almost from half-court, a long high arc with perfect forms, his arms against the sky. Gorgeous, the tone of his muscle, the strength in keeping his arms raised, and that’s too much of an understatement, an overused word for something that deserves more, its own word maybe. 

(The ball drops straight through, of course.)

* * *

Taiga’s wings had come in white and downy at first, catching the light as if shining from in, almost like the moon where even when Tatsuya logically knows it’s just a reflection it seems like that can’t be right. Even when he’d gotten bigger feathers, grey and red among the white, they’d kept shining like that. They do now in the low light against Taiga’s bare back, under Tatsuya’s fingers. Tatsuya knows his own dark brown feathers are something to see, but they aren’t in the same way Taiga’s are, not the way that even when they’re folded you can see how strong they are, can start to see him running with those long legs and going straight up in the air like those exponential curves Tatsuya had been impossibly bored by in statistics classes.

It’s impossible to not be fascinated by the way his feathers ripple under the lightest of Tatsuya’s touches, the way his eyes look back at Tatsuya’s, warm in a way Tatsuya could see even if he couldn’t see Taiga’s broad smile. 

“Hey, you.”

“Hey,” says Tatsuya. 

His voice nearly breaks, too thick for the darkness. Taiga reaches for him, thumbing a line down his cheek, catching the end of his hair, the lobe of his ear, and Tatsuya sighs. He leans down, spreading his hand against the outer edge of Taiga’s wing, feeling the movement of the feathers in reflex under his palm before he closes the rest of the gap and kisses Taiga’s mouth. 

People say that you know you’re in love with someone when kissing them feels like flying, but that’s not true and thinking about it makes Tatsuya feel a little bit insulted, even if the slight was unintentional, a small twist in his gut that makes him want to say that no one who says that could have done either. They’re such wholly different sensations, excellent when combined but each very, very good on its own. Tatsuya feels his wings relaxed behind his back, but only if he tries; the only thing he’s focused on now is the pressure and the taste of Taiga’s mouth on his, until Taiga reaches out to touch Tatsuya’s wings.

His feathers stiffen in surprise, for half a second maybe. Then they relax again, and Taiga’s hands comb though them, the calluses on his fingers catching at the edges, the sound of skin on wing a little louder when it’s coming from Tatsuya’s own wing, through his bones.


End file.
